Episode 6: Jason Snitker aka Parmaster

Nathan Sportsman:

Voice Over:
This episode was recorded offsite at an undisclosed hotel with the Par Master

Nathan Sportsman:
Parmaster. Good to meet you. Thank you for doing this.

Parmaster:
Thank ys iou so much for having me. Let’s

Nathan Sportsman:
Let’s just Start with your origin story, and

Parmaster:

Nathan Sportsman:
Start from the beginning. Where’d you grow up?

Parmaster:
Northeast, Iowa and California. I grew up in Northeast Iowa with my grandparents until I was 12 and then moved to California with my mother. Fifth grade was really me getting used to California and that worked out fine. I mean, I liked it so much because it was, and then when I went to junior high, I took up an instrument. I started playing trumpet and I had met the head of the computer club. He also, but he played a different instrument, tuba, and he sat behind me. So where I was getting hushed up by the director going tap, tap, tap.

Nathan Sportsman:
And this friend that also was in band and did the computer club. Was that your first exposure to computers? That’s how you first

Parmaster:
Got, he was the president of the computer club.

Nathan Sportsman:
What did you guys do in the computer club?

Parmaster:
Well, we studied computing, got to understand it at our level so that we could, whatever education believed our level was, that could bring us along and advance us. I was in the gifted and talented education program in California.

Nathan Sportsman:
So did they have a lab environment with apple toes or something like that?

Parmaster:
Yes, they did.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay. And did you have a computer at home that you could play on too?

Parmaster:
Not till the next year when my grandmother bought me one for my, she sent money for me to buy one for my birthday. And that friend who was the president of the computer club, his father was an engineer at digital research. And so he had an apple too from writing CPM for it. The operating system CPM, because they invented that. It intergalactic digital research. Digital Research Incorporated in Pacific Grove, California. Back then.

Nathan Sportsman:
What would you do with that? How would you spend your time?

Parmaster:
I borrowed a modem from a friend, hooked it to the phone line and called up our local. I wanted to learn how that worked. I didn’t know telecom at all, just for those that dunno. What is A-B-B-S-A bulletin board system. It’s a computer where people can call in with a modem, a modulator, demo modulator, which converts the signals to a computer to talk to another one. And I had a very long phone extension cord that I could run into the kitchen, which is where the phone was.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so what was that like having, you’re starting to have access to the world at your fingertips and having your own?

Parmaster:
It was very interesting because local friends in town also, we talked about which BBSs were better and we give each other the numbers and we’d all do that and see each other on there and send each other messages on it.

Nathan Sportsman:
And these bulletin board systems, so what kind of information would they have? What would they house? Why would you even call into them? What was so interesting about

Parmaster:
’em? Some of them had rare information, like information about the packet switch networks, which universities use ‘EM and corporations use them during the eighties. And these packet switch networks, they would tell you how they explain to you how they would work and they would even give you identifiers to log into them, which were not, which they weren’t supposed to do. Those were actually owned by a company, but they leak out.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how does a kid at 14, 15 16 young, how do you even go about finding something like that? I hear you. You had friends that were interested into it, but

Parmaster:
Well, on the B bss, that’s where I got my first taste of it and then learn how to place a data call on a network, first learned how to log into the network, then place a data call, and then I would place some data calls to where all the cool hackers hung out.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so from the time that you first got that computer, did that immediately start or were you first just figuring out how to write games on it or

Parmaster:
No? No. I was figuring out how to copy games and break software protection to be able to copy games so that I could have my library of software.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so coming back to limited means you didn’t have the ability to

Parmaster:
Buy games. But one way that we were able to get games was over a modem and downloading it from a BBS, it all dovetails together very quickly.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so someone would buy a game, crack it,

Parmaster:
Or we would crack it. Someone would buy a game and then we would look at how we can duplicate the game. My best electronics engineer at school would look at it. This was after I moved into college directly from high school.

Nathan Sportsman:
So were all of y’all just kind of playing around at this point? And was it just mostly local kids that were also

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah, very local community college at this point. So I would go there, even though I was in high school, high school students were allowed to go in there. I didn’t have any classes then. But then I took a test, I tested out and I tested. So I never had to go back to high school again and I could just begin at college.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you just had a desire to wrap up high school and move on

Parmaster:
And be at a college where I could do all the things I love, plus get paid for it

Nathan Sportsman:
And all the things you love, meaning what?

Parmaster:
Cyber stuff? Learning, computing, learning 6, 5 0 2, assembly code for the Apple stuff, general, stuff like that. And I wanted to be able to understand from reverse engineer commercial coffee protections on the Apple Series, which you got a lot of, there are commercial copy programs that you can buy to be able to legally free use backup and keep a copy of software that you buy. So we would get those. Copy two plus was one, locksmith was one. And what I would do is I would get, there’s special parameters for locksmith that you could put in and you could pretty much copy anything if you knew what those were. So my specialty is I would work out what those were. I’d get from Cracked Magazine, they would have those in there. And I had the biggest repository of all the different ways to be able to copy all different games and software.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so were you in a group that was doing this with you or were you still kind of

Parmaster:
Yes. Well, I mean, but they were professionals at it because they understood the programming. Jedi Hackers, they knew Assembly. They knew 6 5 0 2 assembly especially.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how did you meet this group, this Jedi Hackers?

Parmaster:
Because we were all laboratory people at the school.

Nathan Sportsman:
So they were all people in college with you that this wasn’t, yeah,

Parmaster:
Community college, I would’ve staggeringly been stupendous with a degree, had not the United States Secret Service rated at the campus looking for TRW, satellite Secret, something on the vax.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay, we’ll definitely get to that in this name, master the Master of Parameters.

Parmaster:
Oh yeah, the leader of the group. I won’t go into who say who he is, but yeah, because he was the one who had the subscription to Crack Magazine and he’d always set aside for me and said, here it is. You can put ’em in. Because I’d always have my repository of parameters to copy every possible, any commercial software that came across our way that we needed, I’d always have that backup of a way to back it up. And so he started going, he’s like, you got everyone. I saw what you got. He’s like, you have every single one, all the Cracked magazine ones. And he’s like, you’re the master of parameters here. Here’s the rest.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you said your grandfather was a pretty big influence on you. What about on the technical side? Did you have any big mentors or

Parmaster:
Influencers? Yeah, of course. The leader of our hacking group was one of my biggest influence. And my mother had a side job where she worked at a warehouse for intergalactic digital research, which at the time was, it was started by Gary Kal. So he a, became a good friend to me personally when I was only 14 and I was learning CPM learning the disc operating system. He wrote the algorithms for how all that worked. In fact, Microsoft and Bill Gates stole that from him. Anyone can go look at the story of Bill Gates and versus digital research, but back then it was called Intergalactic Digital Research Incorporated. So I like to keep that. I think it’s awesome that he enabled his company that in the first place.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so Gary killed all this very famous and hardcore engineer. He takes an interest in you personally. Why do you think that was?

Parmaster:
Well, I mean, just because we’re friends. He is bored. He needs creativity. Probably he’s got to come up with the next killer app too, because selling not just the operating system, but apps as well.

Nathan Sportsman:
Do you really think it’s boredom or do you think he saw something in you to want to spend time

Parmaster:
With you? I probably, I like to think that he just wanted to help me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And when he spent time with you, how did you spend time together?

Parmaster:
Well, I’d watch him working on the CPM and stuff because I mean, I really was still trying to grasp everything.

Nathan Sportsman:
And when you mentioned him as a mentor, were there any big experiences or major moments that you had with him where he had that impact? If I just say the name Gary Kilda, what’s the first?

Parmaster:
Immediately I just think of my head spins and I think of all the algorithms involved that he invented that are still used to this day in the DISC algorithm.

Nathan Sportsman:
And for you, this was just someone you got to hang out with?

Parmaster:
Yes. It’s a dude from down the block.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so having access to someone like that, spending time with someone like that, that was just

Parmaster:
Walking back from middle school and stopped down in Camie Road, it was on my way. And I’d stop by the warehouse, be like, Hey. He’d be like, Hey, come in. You want to pop? You’d open the fridge.

Nathan Sportsman:
And the leader of this hacking group, the Jedi Hackers, you mentioned, he was a pretty big mentor

Parmaster:
And he was a famous programmer also. Later on he wrote a lot of stuff for NES. He wrote The Little Mermaid for NES, a lot of really big name titles he worked on.

Nathan Sportsman:
What was it about both of them? I mean, a mentor is a pretty important word. Why did you look up to each of them?

Parmaster:
Just because they’re just brilliant and because of what they can do, it’s beyond, okay, you can identify that person as brilliant, but wow, look what they can actually really do. When I see it with my own eyes, it’s what they can do.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so part of what y’all did in Jedi Hackers was hacking software, hacking programs, games you had mentioned in your notes games was kind,

Parmaster:
This guy knows the Apple II Rom in his head backwards and forwards. I could ask him anything he’d know.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you had mentioned in your notes games was sort of like this gateway drug. Can you talk to

Parmaster:
Me? Oh, absolutely. Just on the way the internet came, my time was before this was back during the ARP it or almost to the merit fortune or we getting to the internet, but not quite there yet, years before that.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so are you saying everything kind of almost began with games? That was a

Parmaster:
Well, everyone’s desire, right? So at the beginning of the internet, that’s desire. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that’s wanted. So you’re going online, you’re seeing people just trading software, things like that. It is kind of the way socially all people will fail upward or fail, however they’re failing. They will fail that way. The desire will be, I want that and I’m poor and I want that.

Nathan Sportsman:
And Gary Kilda and this leader of Jedi Hackers, you were also one of the best at what you did, and you were known for cracking these games and

Parmaster:
Right? Well, I mean, I wasn’t the best. I was another guy in it. I was an oddity. So I let them know stuff and they would just be like, wow, okay. I was just the oddity of the group. And when you say you let them know stuff, what? I got into this computer the other day and here, look at this, stuff like that.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you were starting to go down a certain direction and showcasing what you could do, but they weren’t necessarily going down that path with you?

Parmaster:
No, they were not. I mean, one or two I might have connect with me and we’ll all connect to Germany and we’ll talk on this German BBS to these really famous hackers from the world that we’ve all heard of or read of. What about Gary Kal? Gary Kal passed away, and it was unfortunate it happened at this bar in Monterey, and I always used to go play billiards in this. We’d play the local billiards competitions. And in this bar, the one where Gary passed away, when he was in there, I’d be in there with my friends, we doing the billiards stuff. He’d always buy around for the house because he wasn’t poor. He was like, get around, what are you drinking? I’m like, yeah, I get a no genuine draft or whatever. I’m not getting any super expensive, just a beer. Right. Were you there

Nathan Sportsman:
When that happened?

Parmaster:
I wasn’t there. The day that he got struck in the head during the bar, fight with a bottle, it killed him. I wasn’t there then I kind of look back on it now that I’m glad I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t want to have seen Gary ended up at the hospital. He went to the hospital, they checked him out. They said he was okay or whatever, they let him go. And then later on he had come back because something happened. It got worse. And he died. It was called Franklin Street Bar and Grill back then. And I knew it well because it was a lot of local people. We would play billiards with the guy who ran the old Fisherman’s Grotto at the wharf there. His chauffeur was one of the people we’d play against.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so do you know what happened? Why did the fight break out? Why did someone hit him with a,

Parmaster:
It was about Gary’s personal decisions, I think because Gary wore, like he dressed out. He wasn’t a biker. You can’t dress out. Ha. But he dressed out close to. And so I think when they came through, they didn’t like it.

Nathan Sportsman:
In You mean Hell’s Angels?

Parmaster:
I don’t think he was purposely wearing their colors, but to them it looked like he was wearing their colors and that’s what caused this. And that’s what’s really fucking sad about the saddest because he didn’t deserve to die like this.

Nathan Sportsman:
Yeah. And so luckily you weren’t there to have to see that.

Parmaster:
I mean, I was there months before, but luckily I wasn’t there to actually see them. I would’ve been in a fight too. I would’ve been having a problem with Hell’s Angels. No.

Nathan Sportsman:
Was there a funeral? Did you go? I did

Parmaster:
Not

Nathan Sportsman:
Go

Nathan Sportsman:
Because I didn’t know his wife. How did that impact you?

Parmaster:
I didn’t know his son.

Nathan Sportsman:
You didn’t know the family,

Parmaster:
Right? I knew him. How

Nathan Sportsman:
Did that impact you?

Parmaster:
It was a big deal for me. I just lost it for a little while. A couple weeks there. He’s just trying to figure out what happened. I go, I’m investigating around, trying to find out the fuck is going on. Gary’s debt, stop by the bars, ask the people I know. Well, they’re out at the other bars. The hell happened over there. Stuff like that. That’s really all I got.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you’re at the digital frontier and you’re a kid at this point, at that time and being, did you understand how much of the forefront you were already at compared to

Parmaster:
Everyone’s? Well, I mean by the numbers, there were less than a hundred of us all throughout the country doing this.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you have a huge impact from a mentor, Gary. You are clicking up with this group, Jedi Hackers, and then the relationship at home. It’s a little bit strained with your

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah, I made a mistake using equal access codes. Got some bad a, a billing on my local line, my mom’s line. So there’s a spat about that hat.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you basically had ran up the phone bill and there was

Parmaster:
A, yeah, had a bad a billing and ultimately automatic message accounting stuck on the line. So nobody was attacking me. It was something I did where I failed.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you’re emancipated from high school at this point. You’ve graduated out, you don’t need to

Parmaster:
Do. So I’m like, I don’t need to be here. I can be anywhere and do this. So he moved in with friends and I didn’t have to come back ever. Didn’t have to go back to school, didn’t have to go back home to mom’s house. So just hung out, stayed at my friend’s house.

Nathan Sportsman:
Did you take the computer with you?

Parmaster:
Of course. What am I going to leave it? I would never leave that. I need to use that. That’s what, and that’s where, that’s when things, I really started using it. I really, really got into being in touch with everyone in the world more and getting into computers more.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so once you’re out of the house, you’re living with friends, they’re kind of putting you up.

Parmaster:
And I don’t have to pay with rent. So I’m just

Nathan Sportsman:
Standing in our living room. And is that the point in which the hacking at scale begins to

Parmaster:
Start? Right. That’s where I start scanning networks and getting into different computers using the trick that I know.

Nathan Sportsman:
And these roommates that you had, did they have any idea that you were doing this?

Parmaster:
No one did, but he is like, yeah, I want to check this out. Because they’re like, okay, well where can this go?

Nathan Sportsman:
So getting into computers and everything that you were doing, what do you think you would’ve been up to? What do you think you would’ve been doing if not this?

Parmaster:
Oh God, it would’ve been terrible. Would’ve probably been like the other kids, poor hustling. Probably tried drugs and stuff. It would’ve been much worse. Computer crime was so much better than what I would’ve ended up as, to be honest.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you move out and things start to accelerate. On the hacking side, we talked about this.

Parmaster:
I’m going to classes at college too, but not all the time. I have more control of my own schedule. That way

Nathan Sportsman:
You become, and I mean, I definitely want to just dig into this super deep. You were at the nexus of some of the biggest hacking groups all over the world, and you talked to folks in Australia, you talked to folks in the UK in Germany,

Parmaster:
Chaos Computer club in Germany, the realm and other hackers in Australia

Nathan Sportsman:
And A LGM in the uk.

Parmaster:
A LGM. Yeah.

Nathan Sportsman:
M-O-D-L-O-D here.

Parmaster:
MOD and LD. That was actually a bit later.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how does that, you start by your scanning local, can you just kind of walk me through how it begins to translate from that to,

Parmaster:
Because I’m doing more of the trick that I learned on the network to take advantage and exploit it. It’s called pad to pad. Like when someone would call in on an async dial up, they’re issued, they’re on a package assembler and they’re issued a port on it. But there’s a flaw in the network software where if you connect, you can keep placing a connection at your prompt on the local level. You can try to connect to that port someone’s connecting in on, you’re not supposed to be able to do it, but you just keep hammering it and keep brute forcing until someone calls into it and then you’re connected to them and they don’t know it.

Nathan Sportsman:
And to sort of set the stage for folks, so this is pre-internet, this is Timenet and Telenet, which were sort of of precursors

Parmaster:
Was what this one worked on. It was a flaw on the Telenet software.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so because this pad to pad flaw in your ability to do it,

Parmaster:
I would just keep trying to connect to somebody on a port until that port’s not in use. But then eventually someone dials into it and then I pretend like I’m the network and they type their NUI and their password for it, and then they put in the address for the computer they’re trying to connect to. And then I go on another channel to that error, see what its login looks like and present, dump that to them. They think they’re logging into that computer. They’re trying to, but they’re typing everything to me. And so either they’re using a macro to do it because they’ve automated their login or they’re typing it by hand. And either way, I get the login password. So I’m in whatever computer they were trying to get as the,

Nathan Sportsman:
And so this technique that you’re using that starts to get you unfettered access to systems,

Parmaster:
Many things. I got access to what was called TRW mail, then it was a system that processed email for TRW. So I connected to a person in Orange, California who was dialing in to do company work.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so through that access, gaining places, access to places like TRW, we’ll definitely talk about that. Universities and all kinds of stuff you were doing. You also started to have access to people beyond those folks that were interested in computers in California. You started having access to people all around the world.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I mean, other people who were interested in this, they didn’t know. They didn’t really do pad to pad that we limited. Who knew that secret how you could do it?

Nathan Sportsman:
There was this famous bulletin board, I think it was in Germany, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it was called Altos, BBS,

Parmaster:
Right? Altos was the computer company and they made 68,000 base Unix machines. And that was Altos Computer Systems, Munich and Hamburg, because they had a computer at each, but Munich was the big one. Everyone hung out there. Chaos Computer Club, everybody who was the big swinging Dixon in the world would be on that computer and on

Nathan Sportsman:
Altos.

Parmaster:
Yeah, Hans Coroner wrote a realtime chat program that you just connect to a network user address on that computer. You would drop you right into it.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so not only typically bulletin boards, you would put up files and you would share files, but here you could actually chat with everyone.

Parmaster:
Yeah, you’re connecting in and you get to log in and the banner for the system says, log in as guest for chat or gassed In German, it’s gas. So you could have GAST or G-U-E-S-T and boom, it would drop you into the real time chat that written by Hans er. And how

Nathan Sportsman:
Did you find that? Do you have to get invited? Do you have to?

Parmaster:
No, I mean everyone hung out there. It was elite. So the network user address was posted all over the place on our BBSs. So if you have to have an NUI, because remember, all data calls to computers in the world are paid for. There’s no way to connect. You have a per packet charge, so you cannot do it. You have to commit a crime to connect and get it hang out. You’re forced to commit a crime. It’s not like the internet at all.

Nathan Sportsman:
Right. How do you go about even figuring that out, starting with local Dialup, BBSs to now you’re breaking into universities and all this?

Parmaster:
Well, I mean, you’re talking to other people who are really good hackers and they tell you, they connect you to text files on other BBSs that you can read to study and understand how to do these things. That’s how everyone starts. All of the Legion of Doom technical journals were available. The tutorials for hacking,

Nathan Sportsman:
Was it a coordinated effort between the hackers where you would go after something together or was each one sort of doing their own thing?

Parmaster:
Everybody’s doing their own thing. You’ve got your own interests and your own specialties. You can find, okay, so I know this prefix of an address is owned by this corporation, and I know about that corporation. I’ve been in a bunch of their other stuff. I’m targeting that corporation. I’m going to exhaust all addresses connected to those computers, find every computer that I can connect to. And would you guys trade access?

Nathan Sportsman:
Absolutely. Often. And would it be sort of a give to get sort of thing where if you give me access to this?

Parmaster:
Yeah. Right? Yes. I’ll even make you an account inside. I’ve got root inside this computer. I’ll trade you for whatever.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so access is okay, but this pad to pad, I think is what you called it, right? Yeah. The actual technique.

Parmaster:
Yeah, the technique we didn’t really let out. People had known it. LOD had known it. LOD knew how to do exploitation too. Back then they called it Buffer Overflow. They called it getting root through the processor, but it was actually a buffer overflow. But they had a different name for it because they were trying to explain how Morris, when Morris did his worm, how it worked. You knew you had interacted with Yeah, I knew. I mean, from a cast computer club, people hung out on Altos. We would talk. I knew Pango probably better than the rest of them. My ex-girlfriend at the time had hung out with them and his little group in Berlin. And

Nathan Sportsman:
He was selling Secrets to the Soviets, to the KGB?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I believe he had a relative, no, it wasn’t, it technically was not Peno that did this. It was one of the other members, hag Bar Celine Carl Koch. Yes, the one who was killed for it. I remember there was a French VAX specifically that everyone was going ape shit about. We want to know who the fuck got in that computer. Everyone, they’re lighting the fire under everybody. Find out who the fuck got in that French box.

Nathan Sportsman:
And when you say everybody find out, you’re talking about the governments trying to find out what was going on. It was a

Parmaster:
NATO computer. I mean, I don’t know if it’s the same one, but there was a NATO computer in France that had been hacked into, and someone had stolen all of the allied signal signatures for the Allied NATO planes from the database. I don’t know if it was that one, but there was something in that fucking computer that they were going crazy about.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so this guy, Carl Co Habart, in May of 1989, he dies. And I knew a little bit about the history, but

Parmaster:
Like his family, you could tell there was East German Stai

Speaker 5:
Connections

Parmaster:
With them. And so when, near the time when Gorbachev comes to visit the area, he fucking mysteriously this guy dies, burned alive in the black forest. So they said he dumped diesel on himself or petrol diesel or petrol, whatever, and let himself on fire.

Nathan Sportsman:
And all they found from what I read, was his bones. That’s all was left of him. And so you’re arrested, your friends are getting arrested, they have things coming down. This happens in May of 89,

Parmaster:
Then we’re freaking out because now it’s the Cold War and I’ve got the TRW

Nathan Sportsman:
Deltas. And did y’all find out at that time, pretty close to when his death happened? Find out what

Parmaster:
Carl the When he died, you mean? Well, I mean, we had talked about it. They had been in the press for years in German press about what they did for a long time.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so what is going through your head with all of that?

Parmaster:
Oh, them. I don’t know what to make of them. I’m like, I want to know about the Russians. So I’m trying to figure out a way that I can find out about the Russians. They know them, whether it’s Testi or not, they know them. So I wanted to know information about who they have.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so these groups that you hung out with, and you weren’t really in any of ’em, you just knew?

Parmaster:
No, I didn’t want to focus because you draw more attention yourself by being a member of a big name group. So I just never wanted it.

Nathan Sportsman:
But you still were around all of ’em. You engaged with all of ’em. Was that normal for a single person, not involved with any of the groups?

Parmaster:
No. I mean, there were others, but not a lot. I was lucky. Some of ’em liked me, so no. And you didn’t want to be involved because of the attention it might bring? Oh, right. I mean, I saw the attention there guys were getting, and I was like, that’s all the heat and the universe on them. We’ll leave it that way.

Nathan Sportsman:
Well, let’s kind of dig to each one of these things at a time. Can we talk about the realm specifically? Electron, nom, just all those guys, this DEFCON program and sort of Citibank and everything that happened there.

Parmaster:
I think it was Sports originally wrote the DEFCON program, and it was on a, they wrote it for Dial Comms. And what did it do? It would scan network user addresses on the packet, switch network, make connections to the computer, grab the banner, even try to some logins to it. So

Nathan Sportsman:
It was a way to quickly just map out?

Parmaster:
Yep, yep. It’s basically think of Nmap,

Nathan Sportsman:
But

Parmaster:
For a packet switch network, and it would just dump a file. So I mean you could even see them on, you can go look in Jason Scott would have them in the archives, text file archives. Have they used to call ’em sprints In Australia? They called them network sprints, and then they do one for a different corporations network, identify it. And

Nathan Sportsman:
So Forest from Realm wrote this program, I think along with Force and Thunderbirds. Thunderbird

Parmaster:
Was the original author, I think.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they wrote it. It was the realms tool, sort of like pad to pad. Did they just give that out to anyone or did they keep that close, that program?

Parmaster:
No, they kept it. I mean, they had traded me a do coms before, and I’d use those dial coms to place network calls out. But the DEFCON program would be, I’d see it in their directory. So I grabbed a copy of it, had it on a five and a quarter disc for a while. I took a copy. I’d had a copy of it. You took it. That wasn’t given

Nathan Sportsman:
To you, you found it and you

Parmaster:
Took it. No, but we had traded and they’d left it there sitting in for their use and an account that they had given me traded for accounts.

Nathan Sportsman:
And this program has a pretty big impact on what’s going to happen next. Is my understanding correct that Forest used this program to find hosts within Citibank?

Parmaster:
Yes, he did. Yeah. Two, three and two four within GT Telenet were owned by Citibank, and it was known by all of us. So they plugged those in and boom, exhaustive skiing. And they found a host initially that spewed out. Well, they had connected. They didn’t know what the hell they’d found. And so they found, yeah, the host spewed off credit card numbers. And why is that? How is that? They didn’t know. I figured it out, but I heard about it and I was like, you know what, I’d like to get that because then I can grab those numbers and I can put ’em through a credit card checker, the kind that you have for stores and just verify that they’re actually lived. It really, that’s what they are. So I did by hand, did it. I didn’t use DEFCON to do it. I did it. I sat there and just typed by hand. It was about 25,000 different addresses I had to do.

Nathan Sportsman:
And because from what I understand from the,

Parmaster:
I have a little macro that does the first part of the network address. And then I would type mainly type the end numbers as I’m anchoring.

Nathan Sportsman:
And from what I understand from the book, Forres had this program, he found this,

Parmaster:
And then we’re talking about it on Altos,

Nathan Sportsman:
But he won’t give you the program. And he’s being kind of coy with

Parmaster:
Where

Nathan Sportsman:
Exactly it is.

Parmaster:
Like I don’t know what you’re going to do with it.

Nathan Sportsman:
But he gave you a part of the quote network block where you could start getting it

Parmaster:
By? Yeah, he gave me the pre-printed portion of the network that it was located in, and that narrows it down a lot. I mean, we’re talking millions of computers at that level.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so what happened next? He gives you this network block, you scan it by hand, and

Parmaster:
Boom, I get the same thing. I connect and boom, it just floods my screen with 10,000 credit cards and the details of their transactions.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you took that, downloaded it?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I turned the screen capture on, grabbed all that, wrote

Nathan Sportsman:
It to disc. So you have this 10,000 lists of credit cards. And from what I understand in the book, these weren’t just normal credit cards. These were Saudi princes.

Parmaster:
Yeah, these are Saudi American bank debit cards. So the debit card, the first debit cards I’d ever heard of, I didn’t even know. They didn’t really exist before this as far as I know. But these were our debit cards linked to a bank account, Saudi American bank. So these guys are getting proceeds from their oil deposited into these accounts. And I’m honestly, when I’m looking at ’em, there’s $5 million on them, a lot of them.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you have that impact. You boom, you hit paid dirt. What do you do next? What do you do with that information?

Parmaster:
Well, I’m like, is that valid? Boom, boom. Like I said, I’m calling it in just to see if I can do a simple, a $20 charge on it. Is it real? And yes, Trump comes back real. So they’re

Nathan Sportsman:
Real. And so do those get traded in the community where you’re start doing,

Parmaster:
They’ve been traded on bulletin boards in Australia first, right, because what those guys have been doing shit with, they were making calls. They call the fucking at and t operator and use a Visa card to make a call long distance and they would do. And when I got everything back from the case, I literally was given the call logs from Australia also.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so when you had that outcome, did you tell force that you had figured it out, you had found it, and that you had the 10,000 cards as well?

Parmaster:
No, I did not. I didn’t really get into that. I don’t remember if I did or not right off the bat. I think I waited. And so what you collected,

Nathan Sportsman:
What did you ultimately

Parmaster:
Do with them? I like they did down in Australia. I probably gave out a couple to people that if you can figure out how to use it, go ahead. Just do’s a dumb kid. Did you ever use one yourself to make phone calls or anything like that? No, because I couldn’t make a physical plastic card move. But back then, and so you could use them with the operator, but in Australia they did that. Different country, different standards. I mean, you could go to any American payphone, hit zero, get an operator and bill it to a credit card as well, or debit card. I think actually back then you might have had to call a special at and t operator.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you have this outcome, you’re successful. This is kind of happening in the background, but during that time, you’re also hacking into a lot of other things. You had mentioned TRW?

Parmaster:
Yeah. Well, TRW, like I said, I got into their TRW mail system and I got that guy’s login from Orange who was logging into work, and you get access into that system. And that system is TRB, space and Defense, and it’s the postings of their press releases in la. So I’m like, and this is killer satellite. They’re both been developing on laser beam to destroy, move the satellite around, and that enemy satellites destroy them, cut ’em up with a laser, and that was real. And that was Reagan’s baby. You’re talking about S-D-I-S-D-I. Correct. And after this, at the very end of it, they actually did work on one. It was called the Alpha Laser. I don’t know if it was ever successfully built, but that’s the last one that they have on file that of SDI that they were building. And it was supposedly like a real genius type laser that would actually work in space. And you’re

Nathan Sportsman:
Doing this all on your own, so you’re hacking into TRW on your own. You’re

Parmaster:
Right. But I mean, like I said, that’s a tele mail, TRW male. And so what I could see was I could see the press releases they’re pushing out about like, yeah, we’re building this fucking awesome killer satellite with those laser. And then I could see the diffs of it, the delta, I could see, well, we’re putting, okay, they put that out there and then they edited it and they put it back this way. So I’m like, why are things getting removed? They’re removing things about what they’re telling the public. I mean, decide somebody decides that’s top secret. You can’t say that, or whatever. So that’s where you get these deltas from.

Nathan Sportsman:
So the deltas in the sense that they were making the capabilities more than they actually were, or the opposite?

Parmaster:
Either were either were yes.

Nathan Sportsman:
Hiding capabilities and didn’t want to dispose.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I mean, the KG B was after this. The Falcon of this small man ain’t shit compared to what this thing, right? Because this is a laser in a satellite. And so along with T RW to destroy, destroy the Soviets or spacecraft.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you had mentioned the Soviets before. Did you do any hacking against Russian systems?

Parmaster:
1989 I had, it was Moscow library on the pad. The packet assemble dissimilar for it. If the last part of the address is nine nine, that’s the debug port. So I’d always try that and drops you to a prompt. And there’s a little menu of stuff you can do in the debug. So I got that on Fsco Library in 1989,

Nathan Sportsman:
You were prolific. How many companies or organizations do you think you broke into over that time period? Are we talking about tens, hundreds, tens in TRW, in Citibank? Were those some of the more epic, some of the more

Parmaster:
First one’s, the most epic. But it is very complicated what happened with how Citibank worked, because Citibank was actually a pad to pad of a kind, because that’s why the scanner Defcon would be running and making these connections to the address. But it would get the TTY would open and boom, it would get, because on the Citibank side, there’s a computer that’s opening a port to sending print information to a printer. But because of the pad to pad flaw and the network,

Nathan Sportsman:
It’s send it to you,

Parmaster:
It’s

Nathan Sportsman:
Sending it directly

Parmaster:
To me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so it thinks it’s sending it to the printer to be printed out and you’re just capturing all these

Parmaster:
And boom, hit capture, boom, it’s written a disc. Yeah, that’s what happened.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so that one you mentioned you kept a little bit low key. You’re not sure if you told force about that you had found it? Not until later. Not until later. What about TRW? I mean, did you let people know that you had gotten in and that you were seeing these things about these killer satellites?

Parmaster:
Yeah. No. I never bragged about T RW at all. But I had friends that were interested in things and we’d talk about stuff. But that’s dumb. You don’t want to do that because when we have this precise access at this level, talking about it at all is a risk

Nathan Sportsman:
Because someone might be an informant or couldn’t get back

Parmaster:
Me big time.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so one of the credit cards, and correct me if I’m wrong, but from this Citibank hack, you had these credit cards of these wealthy

Parmaster:
Debit cards,

Nathan Sportsman:
Debit cards of these wealthy

Parmaster:
Of the guys getting their money dumped from the oil profits into their account.

Nathan Sportsman:
And ultimately you give one to someone that what you just said, they were either an informant or undercover, but it was like a timenet security officer?

Parmaster:
No, it was a Telenet

Nathan Sportsman:
Telenet security officer.

Parmaster:
This was all on GTE Telenet

Nathan Sportsman:
Where

Parmaster:
This problem and the floor and pad occurred.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so is that where the Secret Service starts to get involved?

Parmaster:
Yes.

Nathan Sportsman:
Do you know what happened? Did he wind up contacting the Secret Service, or how did that one card,

Parmaster:
I don’t know. It goes through the bank system somehow and they get to San Mateo and the investigator, Citibank investigator is Larry Wallace and San Mateo for that my area.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so he picks up the information from the telex

Parmaster:
And then works with Secret Service on it,

Nathan Sportsman:
And that’s where their investigation on you begins. Can you kind of just walk me through that process of how that started when you first found out that people were onto you and starting to look for you?

Parmaster:
Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward. They got enough If you’re busted, okay, well, we found this. That’s when they find a, you have a financial instrument that’s not belonging to you. You’re done. It’s start. You can get 20 years for that nowadays even. But back then, it’s the same secret. Services is in charge of financial crimes by electronic means. So Bureau does some stuff with that. Not always. People tend to call the bureau first and that bureau on intake, everything gets classified as secret. It can go up or down. So if it gets to them first, it’s okay. And it is really a secret service matter. It’ll go to the Secret Service, it’ll get it to where it belong.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so this credit card, it makes it its way from Telenet to Citibank. Secret Service eventually gets called in by Citibank, and then through other folks that are detailed in the book, they start to zero in on par. They start to zero in on your phone number.

Parmaster:
Brandon informants talk about, oh, heard about this guy. Got access or something and gave someone one.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so on November 25th, I think 1989, they show up, but you’re actually out of town. 1988, they show up. But you’re out of town at the time, right? When they,

Parmaster:
Right. Yep.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you’re living with these two friends

Parmaster:
And I’m just coming back from San Jose Airport because that day I was driving back. Where were you? So I was flying from Iowa to San Jose Airport.

Nathan Sportsman:
Were you with your mom?

Parmaster:
Yep.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay. But they show up to these friends that you’re living with after you left

Parmaster:
Their address, not my mom’s address.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so what happens? They

Parmaster:
Conduct a raid. They grab the computer because the computer’s still sitting in their living room

Nathan Sportsman:
And your friends are interrogated.

Parmaster:
They’re freaking the fuck out. Yeah, right. The feds are here, right? As one does, as one does, as one does.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they’re interrogated. They almost think one of ’em is you at first, right?

Parmaster:
Yeah. They thought my friend Scott was me. And before you get back, because they had been watching the house for a while, and so seeing Scott come and go and more than me, I guess they might have thought he was me somehow.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you call ’em and you check in, you don’t have any idea of what’s just happened.

Parmaster:
I have no concept.

Nathan Sportsman:
And they’re playing it cool. They don’t tell you anything.

Parmaster:
They’re

Nathan Sportsman:
Worried that the phones are tapped because

Parmaster:
They are. Yeah.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how did you ultimately get

Parmaster:
Tipped off that it was going down? I called the girl that I knew who had come to visit and hang out at the house with us from LA who knew about all these things. How would she know She was in the scene? She was with us, and she come to visit me at the house and hung out. I mean, it’s in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Theorem. No, no. This was someone else. This was Tammy. Tammy, okay. From la.

Nathan Sportsman:
How’s that? So similar to the secret service of the FBI, watching you guys, you had a way to watch them and know what they were up to as well. And so somehow that got,

Parmaster:
Well, I mean somebody that if I find somebody, they’re leaning on hell yes, right? I’m going to get mine. I’m going to find out.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so is that through someone hacked into their own networks, or you have the phones tapped or you’re just somehow able to No,

Parmaster:
No, I’m just, she knows that whatever went down somehow and that’s all I need to know. So I’m like, I ain’t going there. I was like, I did not go. And

Nathan Sportsman:
So what happened

Parmaster:
Next?

Nathan Sportsman:
You found out

Parmaster:
It went to the roommates? I talked to them off channel, off through other means, and I to, I met them at the bus station like Greyhound, and they swooped in. I jumped in and got Ray. They brought me to a lawyer they knew, and that’s how I got my lawyer, Richard Rosen. Correct.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you know that this raid has happened. It sounds like you did take a bus back to California and they pick you up?

Parmaster:
Oh, no, no, no. I took a flight to San Jose, then took a bus from San Jose to Salinas. And so I was at that station and I’m just trying not to get caught by cops at this point. They got to be on the lookout for me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And they had surveillance on. Were they tailing your friends and were they

Parmaster:
Yes, they were all the time. And they had been doing it before the raid for weeks, right? I mean, the professional raid.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you show up to this Richard Rosen’s law firm. Did he know that you were coming in?

Parmaster:
Yeah. I mean, they had set up to meet with him, and his secretary looks at me like I’m a fucking alien. That just appeared. They’d never heard of what I’m, I’m getting pursuit. So first thing Richard does is he is on the phone with the feds about the pursuit and getting the heat off of me trying to get me, didn’t want to capture me.

Nathan Sportsman:
So he calls the feds. You’re working, the feds are working through him to talk to you because you’re represented now, right?

Parmaster:
They’re crying to Right, but he breaks ’em down. We agreed that, okay, I’ll come in, I’ll get booked to the police station so that I get booked. They give me a 5 0 1 C computer crime written on a ticket. I got a fucking parking ticket for computer crime.

Nathan Sportsman:
Do you still have it?

Parmaster:
I wish I did. Actually destroyed all the stuff

Nathan Sportsman:
They

Parmaster:
Gave me back. I’m like, no one needs to ever have this but me, and I’ll just end it right now. And so you do go in, you get booked, you get processed, right? They got my prints. They got my photos

Nathan Sportsman:
In and out. Same day?

Parmaster:
Yep. Okay. There’s no way that I go in and don’t get out because what we negotiated.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you and Richard are talking, he’s represented to you now you’re going to have a hearing. What happens? What happens next? How does he advise you on how?

Parmaster:
Well, I mean, we have a long, well, these months until that happens. So it’s just all preparation for that.

Nathan Sportsman:
But you’re out free at this point. You’re not doing any time or anything like that?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I not on bail or anything.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so through that process, did you and he discover kind of where the DA was thinking about things, how they wanted to

Parmaster:
He’s very good at it, and yes, that’s why I hired him. He is stupid. I mean, he is the best criminal defense attorney I’ve ever met. A guy killed someone and they found the knife in that person’s back that he killed, and his fingerprints on the knife sticking in the back of that person. And Richard got them off. I was like, this is going to be my lawyer.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so what kind of charges were you looking at? What kind of charges, damages, everything like that?

Parmaster:
5 0 1 C3 computer crime, the state statute in California.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you had mentioned last night, it was something like 5.3 million in damages or

Parmaster:
5.5 million.

Nathan Sportsman:
5.5 million in damages.

Parmaster:
Recently, the agent that had, who used to have to look in the system every six months to put updates about me, he goes, yeah, five point Jason. Hey, 5.5 million Saudi American Bank. I’m like, yeah, hey. Yeah, 5.5 million. How old were you? 17.

Nathan Sportsman:
What is going through your head with everything?

Parmaster:
I’m terrified that because I’m going to disappear forever or with the TRW diff thing, maybe they’re going to kill me right there. I don’t know. That’s why I’m not going to, if I’m getting processed by justice, sure, that’s fine, but I’m not going to be retained by them by any means. And so your lawyer, you got 5.5 million in damages, but he said the last one that they had told him was 3 million. They’d come to him with. They wanted to make a deal for 3 million in restitution. I’m never going to have 3 million in my life anyway. I don’t know why they’d bother.

Nathan Sportsman:
And along with the restitution, were you looking at any jail time?

Parmaster:
I was looking at whatever they thought they could get, because then it was going to be prosecuted and then there would be sentencing guidelines for computer crime and state computer crime, not federal.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you have a hearing coming up. What was Rosen’s take to you on all of it? How did he think that it was going to go down? What was his advice?

Parmaster:
He brought me, he said it was like pulling teeth to get answers from them about anything. But eventually they had wanted 3 million restitution was part of what came out. Not much else other than those things.

Nathan Sportsman:
But once you heard that number, then

Parmaster:
I’m not going to stick around for whatever circus these people are going to throw for me because just the raids and the way they treated people, these are federal agents in a manner of national security. They’re acting not just financial security. They’re acting like it’s national security. They’re violent people. They break doors down. They’re not normal. It’s not like a normal police.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you decide you’re not going to stick around to see what happens,

Parmaster:
What’s next.

Nathan Sportsman:
Did you tell your lawyer that you were going to take off?

Parmaster:
No. I wish I had because he was a little upset. I didn’t at the end, but at the end, it’s so many years later, it seemed okay, I guess. And so you’re

Nathan Sportsman:
17, like you said, you’re scared about what could happen. You decide to run.

Speaker 5:
And

Nathan Sportsman:
So what’s the plan? Where do you go? What do you do?

Parmaster:
Hang out with other hackers and stuff. Really. I think I went down to San Diego first in California, but I’m eventually going to wander out to, but being in California, nothing unusual about that. I’m a Californian.

Nathan Sportsman:
So are you couch surfing? Are you’re just staying at a buddy’s pad, that sort of thing? Yep. What makes you decide to go somewhere? What makes you decide it’s time to leave? Do the people that you’re staying with, do they know what’s going on?

Parmaster:
Because it’s the scene. They know. They know.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they could be, I mean, aiding and abetting, right?

Parmaster:
Right. But my court date hasn’t been up yet.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you decide to go on the lam, you go down to San Diego. And so how are you?

Parmaster:
I’m trying to figure out what should I do? Do I need to go to another country? Could I go to Mexico because I’m down near a border crossing. At least I could get the fuck out of USA.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you had friends from the community down in San Diego?

Parmaster:
All my friends, me and all my contacts are hackers all across this nation of the 100 or so that were like us and did these things.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they’re almost like safe houses where you can go, you can, right? Kind of. Yeah, you can stay on the couch and

Parmaster:
Nobody’s, their parents aren’t going to know who I am. I’m just their friend visiting or whatever.

Nathan Sportsman:
But they knew what was going on and why they needed to protect you.

Parmaster:
Right.

Nathan Sportsman:
How did you decide where you were going to go, who you’re going to be with? How did you decide when it was time to leave? Because you wound up going around to a lot of different spots? I kind of

Parmaster:
Looked at when was the best opportune times, because it wasn’t always that I could do it. I had to pick my times when I could do it just to be able to.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you knew that you had to move around over time to prevent getting caught.

Parmaster:
Right, because I’m hacking all the entire time I’m doing it. I’m not stopping at all.

Nathan Sportsman:
How do you even make ends meet when you’re on the run? Just living from location to location

Parmaster:
Help. I had a girlfriend. She did options at a Swiss bank, so I’m like, can I borrow some money here and there? And that worked.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you mentioned the hacking was still happening through all of it, and it started to accelerate. You already had this issue that you’re dealing with Citibank and the Secret services after you, what was the thought behind Screw it and continuing to excel

Parmaster:
Like, I’m already screwed. What am I going to do? I’m like, I need to get more powerful. I need to get more powerful. Literally, that’s what I’m thinking. So I start working on time that, because I’ve already done telling it. So time that starting getting as engineers on that deep in there.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so from the minute that you’re getting down to San Diego to the time that the duration that you’re there, you’re hacking on the computer?

Parmaster:
No, that was still calling it then. But after I left California, more time that,

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay. And so San Diego to LA and then LA to Jersey,

Parmaster:
Right? I mean with the pit stop I attended Summer Con 89. You went to a con during that process? I went to Summer Con 89, all LOD, old school, LOD was there,

Nathan Sportsman:
Was that the first summer con?

Parmaster:
No, it was 1989. That was like the 20 or 12th or something. I think. I’d have to go look at the banner. But I met other people from FRAC Magazine, interviewed me there.

Nathan Sportsman:
And was it just widely known, not just in your circle of friends that are helping people that

Parmaster:
Like Abby Hoffman knew, interviewed me. Did they know you were on the run

Nathan Sportsman:
When they,

Parmaster:
Some people there at the conference did know? Most did not. However.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you went from Summer Con, had a pit stop, got to see friends, and then you go to Jersey. And is it just more friends in these groups that more hacking friends, freaking friends there actually better with phones. How long were you staying on average in each of these places? More

Parmaster:
Than two weeks usually. Like I don’t know what that circus that they’re going to have in California. For me, I don’t know how it’s going to go. I know it’s state right now. They could do some dip shit thing, like try to raise it from state level. But I think the Feds were afraid to take it. They didn’t want to pay to house me in prison. Right. So they would leave that to state to pay that and handle the investigation that way. It forced the state to house me in prison.

Nathan Sportsman:
And were there any times where you knew you had to leave where you were, but you didn’t have the next place lined up? Were there any times that you didn’t have a house to stay in? Yeah,

Parmaster:
There were a couple times I’ve slept on our park bench. It is not a glamorous, fugitive lifestyle, I’ll tell you.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so are you taking all of your hacking notes? Are you taking your computer around with you or how does that work?

Parmaster:
I’ve got a bag and I’ve got a laptop, old school laptop back then.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you go from California and it’s the first time you’re leaving the state on the run, you go to New Jersey. Why did you pick New Jersey after tour?

Parmaster:
A freaker friend there. He’s got a left end loop in his house. What is that? He turned on the phone line himself from Switch. We call that a left end loop. And so you could hack freely from his house? Right. I mean that doesn’t exist, so there’s no person connected to that.

Nathan Sportsman:
And are most of these people that you’re staying with, are they members of LOD or MOD or is it just a smattering of all types of folks? All various. And in Jersey, where were you in Jersey? Were you in Newark or Trenton or

Parmaster:
No, closer to Jersey City. In the Jersey side. Not in New York side. And then

Nathan Sportsman:
Ultimately from Jersey, you make it down to North Carolina. Right. And that’s where Nibbler is,

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah. He’s got him and his family owns this whole huge complex of a motel and little houses they rent out. They call them Shell a And he knew what was going on.

Nathan Sportsman:
Is that right?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I mean he was a very capable young man.

Nathan Sportsman:
And did his family have any idea what you were up to or what the relationship was about?

Parmaster:
No. I mean I probably wouldn’t admit if they did. I liked them. They were good people. I mean, they’re honest to God, good southern people. And when

Nathan Sportsman:
You’re there, a faction of LOD, which the media or law enforcement called the Atlanta three. So there’s leftist, prophet and il, is that right? Correct. You somehow get into contact with them and they basically own the phone network and do they somehow tip

Parmaster:
You off? Yeah, it was Southern Bell Nron 99. I was friends with him. Pretty good il, that’s his other handle. When you read the stuff, you’ll see IL a lot. But Nron 99, his handle. I knew him best as.

Nathan Sportsman:
And when they were contacting you about, you’re staying at this black mountain, is that what it was called? Yep. That was the hotel motel just outside of Asheville. And had they already been indicted? Had they already been arrested? Yeah,

Parmaster:
They were already well deep within their process.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so just like with you, even after the arrest come down, they’re still accelerating on the

Parmaster:
No, they’re done. Whatever, they’re done. But they’re fine with telling me what happened and how things worked on that network. And so

Nathan Sportsman:
What did profit tell you about what was going on in North Carolina? Was it them that kind of tipped you off?

Parmaster:
Yeah. Well they said, well, you can pat to pat on Southern Bell. I’m like, okay, good. So then that’s a whole new weapon for me. I got a whole new Adventure land and did Southern Bell. Southern Bell. I mean all the phone computers in Bell South, that means I could steal them, all of them.

Nathan Sportsman:
And did that include coverage for North Carolina?

Parmaster:
All of it, yes.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you could look at phones being tapped?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I could do things with the equipment. I could look at records for phone numbers, everything.

Nathan Sportsman:
So while this is going on, they’ve gotten arrested, you’ve obviously been arrested.

Parmaster:
Well, I had been arrested to be charged. Right. But I didn’t show up, so I left.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so did that lead you to start focusing more on Soviet computers through the time that you were on the run on? No,

Parmaster:
Not really. Not at all actually. But I did want to know what they had gotten and who they knew from Monterey. We take Cold War. Seriously. It’s all CIA and DIA in my town.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so the Atlanta three, they’ve been arrested, but they give you access to,

Parmaster:
Well, I mean they didn’t give me access. They say, you know how to do this, so do it.

Nathan Sportsman:
And ultimately you start figuring out that the voltage on the phone lines, that the motel are signaling high, that something seems off.

Parmaster:
Something seemed wrong when I looked up on something on the computer for the switch for that town. So what I did is I, my friend there, he had his buddy, the guy, their normal telephone technician come in who is very good and new. He could do bug sweeps everything. He checked the lines and he’s like, yeah, the lines are way off. So you knew something, it was bad.

Nathan Sportsman:
You knew something was up and they were probably monitoring you. They absolutely a hundred percent were monitoring us. We knew that. And then Hugo is coming in around this time, the big hurricane that,

Parmaster:
So we got everything all written, everything, physical media, anything, took it and put it in a storage place, stashed it away. They were coming to raid. They did come and raid, right? Yeah. We knew that was happening when they showed up. They don’t trip like that for nothing.

Nathan Sportsman:
Right. So when they showed up, what was that? Did you know that they were coming that day? Did you just see him outside?

Parmaster:
No, I was on the second floor and outside my room had the door open like this. And I looked out, I see Vans all in the parking lot, dudes, treasury agents wearing jackets, got the blue jacket on a bureau jacket. But these were treasury agents. They didn’t really have anything written on theirs. And so I see that and I’m like, holy fucking shit. And they turn around and look up, they see my door open and I’m like, shut that door again. Yeah, that’s a bad portal. And

Nathan Sportsman:
So they’re about to come in and they’re going to go

Parmaster:
Room by room. Well, they’re searching. They’re grabbing the whole place and looking. They don’t need to go room by room yet. They decided to identify the hierarchy of the place. And so

Nathan Sportsman:
Have they surrounded the motel at this point? Yeah.

Parmaster:
I mean they had the locals there, the police also.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they have the place surrounded. You’re on the second floor, you see them. Oh shit.

Parmaster:
Yeah, right close the door. I’m making it so they don’t see me. And I’m much heavier set than my photo from when I was booked showed. So I don’t look remotely the same. They can’t tell I’m me. But there

Nathan Sportsman:
Was a kid outside that they thought was you at first, is that right?

Parmaster:
Yeah, one of the workers.

Nathan Sportsman:
And they grabbed him and put him in a van

Parmaster:
And they questioned him.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so the noose is clearly closing in on you

Parmaster:
And

Nathan Sportsman:
They are about to go through the hotel room by room. What did you do at that point

Parmaster:
Then? I’m through my side channels, talking to the people through in the hotel, getting away to get out, how to sneak out. Well, we got to wait for dark, and then I got to make it so that they don’t get searched and hit this room. So have the one dude come up to the connecting room, the room next door, which has a connecting door, go in there and open that door so I can get through and pop in between rooms if I need to. If there’s searching one, I can pop in to the other one, kind of like here.

Nathan Sportsman:
And that’s ultimately what you did. As they’re coming into this room, you pop over to the other room and then they do their sweep. They don’t find you.

Parmaster:
Right. Miraculously I’m not caught. And I’m still free because I’m free. I’m physically running as fast as I can to get away and be shot at it. If I have to. I’m not going to let them take me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so do you wait for night to come and for them to appear to leave

Parmaster:
And then for the presence to die down at night. And then s snuck into the worker. One dude who was cool with me, and he had a car, so he pulled up, I dove in the back of the seat, threw a blanket over me, just laid down below the seat and the foot part so I wouldn’t be noticed. There was nobody sitting in the back of that car. He takes me out to where he takes you out to Asheville. Right. And then from Asheville, I get to Charlotte getting on a flight. I had like $450 in cash getting on that flight. I get in there, I’m like, I need to buy a ticket. I walk up, it’s the eighties, you can fucking smoke on the plane. Other weird shit. And I’ve got cash. I’m walking up to the counter, buying a ticket to New York and paying cash, getting it physically printed right there for me. And I have a paper. Tickets are like cash. I just bought it and I was ready to go.

Nathan Sportsman:
And back then, so you’re coming up to the counter with a paper ticket back then. Do you have to show ID to get on a

Parmaster:
Absolutely not. Okay.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so there is no do not fly list or anything like

Parmaster:
That? Yeah, nothing exists. If agents are looking for people, that’s it. Or if Israelis are looking, if they’re looking for terrorists, something. But that’s all there is. And so

Nathan Sportsman:
You leave Black Mountain, you go to Asheville, you wind up in Charlotte over a flight, and your name on the manifest is just whatever you said.

Nathan Sportsman:
Wow. Yeah,

Parmaster:
A little bit different these days. Yeah, I think, what was my name on the manifest? It was Duncan something. Duncan, Idaho from the, yeah. Yeah. Dunking

Nathan Sportsman:
Idaho. And so you wind up in Charlotte. Did you actually have friends there or was that just the next connection out to get out of the

Parmaster:
No, I had to be in the airport and do that to fly away.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay. It

Parmaster:
Was Dunking Idaho. I fly,

Nathan Sportsman:
Was that the first flight out

Parmaster:
At the closest regional big airport where I’m going to have connecting flights to big regional airports international.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so this is the second time that the Secret Service has gotten extremely close even. Right. Technically

Parmaster:
These guys were showing treasury badges.

Speaker 5:
Okay.

Parmaster:
So Secret Service. But back when they were run by the treasury and these guys were just, instead of using the Secret Service badge, they’re using the treasury.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so the first time when they had rated, you weren’t there. This time you actually got to see them and

Parmaster:
Coming

Nathan Sportsman:
In and trying to get you, what’s going through your mind at that point? This fucking sucks. That’s going through my mind. This fucking sucks. And so you get to Charlotte and then what? You jump to

Parmaster:
New York.

Nathan Sportsman:
To New York,

Parmaster:
I think it was JFK Land. So

Nathan Sportsman:
You got to Charlotte, it was the biggest local regional airport. You ultimately hop on a plane to New York. But did you ever think about just with all your friends all over the world trying to get out of the US altogether and going international?

Parmaster:
Of course I thought about it, but not right then.

Nathan Sportsman:
And did you ever try? No, I did not. Did not ever try. And so then in New York, how much time did you spend there? I think ultimately you went down to Virginia too?

Parmaster:
Yep, I was there at least nine months.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay, so that’s a decent amount of time over this two and a half year run that you were on the lam? I want to say nine

Parmaster:
Months. It could have been seven, I

Nathan Sportsman:
Don’t know. And so the hacking had accelerated from the first raid to now the second raid. So does it die down then and you start to be more low key, or does it just

Parmaster:
Continue to a little bit? It pretty much dies down. I don’t have, it’s all about getting set up with everything to be able to have this access and do these things. I don’t always have the right physical setup, a phone line, my work area I can do stuff from. Even if it’s just at a corporation, some closet somewhere that whatever you do, you do

Nathan Sportsman:
Whatever you could get access to, whatever you could get your hands on.

Parmaster:
Right. Yeah.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so in New York for that nine months, did you at least get to put your head down on the same bed for nine months or were you still actually got a little bit of stability?

Parmaster:
Mostly, unless I wanted to travel somewhere else around locally, visiting people I haven’t seen ever or in a long time. And with New York, I mean, that was a big, there’s a lot of people. And then that I would know, seen people that I could meet.

Nathan Sportsman:
And MOD was pretty big in New York. Were you spending time with them?

Parmaster:
I did meet Corrupt one time when I went to New York, but I didn’t really hang out with the others. And

Nathan Sportsman:
Corrupting John Lee, he was on the cover of Wired and

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Nathan Sportsman:
And when you were there for that nine months, is that when you saw him or was that a different time? That

Parmaster:
Was then.

Nathan Sportsman:
It was then. Okay. And then so why it seems like it’s a little bit stable for you. You got nine months, you know where you’re going to sleep every night. What ultimately cost you to kick out of there and go to Virginia?

Parmaster:
The rumor had gone around that. I was in the Tri-state area. So just because that rumor and I’d heard back about that, I immediately was like, well, you know what? I should get out of here. Lemme see where the next place is going to be. It won’t be here. Then I am in the Trina State area, so I’m leaving. They knew that

Nathan Sportsman:
In Virginia Beach and through all of this theorem was periodically

Parmaster:
Seeing you. She would come, she’d flood in New York and I’d take the train down, get her at the airport, and we’d party and go stay in fucking nice hotels in New York. She had money. She didn’t give a fuck.

Nathan Sportsman:
And did any of them, including her ever, just on the risk of aiding and abetting, did any of them get interrogated or get

Parmaster:
Arrested? There was one time she said FPI was talking to people, they were getting on a plane, but it was about a murder. So I don’t know. She knows.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you wind up rather

Parmaster:
Than idea, you

Nathan Sportsman:
Wind up in Virginia Beach. And how long did you get to have stability there?

Parmaster:
I honestly don’t know how long that was. Maybe that would be my third big chunk. Eight months, maybe. Eight months.

Nathan Sportsman:
And then ultimately, while you’re done in Virginia Beach, a buddy of yours, Morty Rosen says, you should come up to New York, hang out with friends,

Parmaster:
Right? Yep.

Nathan Sportsman:
And what happens next?

Parmaster:
Oh yeah, I get, secret Service gets word that I’m coming not from him, but as I found out from that, the actual agent himself, he comes and has coffee with me once a year up here. He said it was one of the other ones gave me up that I was going to be there.

Nathan Sportsman:
They were all, I mean just this whole time period in a relatively short amount of time, everyone’s getting arrested. Even Morty Rosen, I think three months before he had been arrested,

Parmaster:
He was even done in Time Magazine under his arrest.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so the Secret Service knew you were coming up, someone had dimmed you out?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I got dimmed out by probably one of his friends that we both knew, but I didn’t trust much, but he trusted more like that and fuck that. So anyway, but you know what I mean? And I got dined out and literally I was waiting for my Chinese food to be delivered, knock at the door. I opened the door thinking it’s my Chinese food and it’s the special agent in charge of the New York Field office for Secret Service. And Tom Tommy, the guy who I know who comes up every year picking me up, it was the special agent in charge, threw me up against the wall and had the gun on my side. They actually pulled the, put the cuffs on me.

Nathan Sportsman:
They pulled the guns out of the holsters.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I mean, this dude was, he’s serious. You are not getting away. It’s in my kidney. It would blow me. I would’ve been crippled forever from that moment on had I tried to flee. These are agents, it’s a federal police.

Nathan Sportsman:
I know you’re arrested, but was there any sense of just relief at all that it’s finally over? I mean, two and a half years, almost

Parmaster:
Two and a half years. Not relief at all. Like Jesus fucking Christ. What’s going to happen now that they’ve got me? I’m terrified. Now’s the more terrifying part now. It’s ending after all the time. I mean, Logan’s run. I got a crystal blinking in my palm, and I’ve managed to run the time and the system out that long once we’re seeing what’s going on now. And to your point about

Nathan Sportsman:
Logan’s run the ball finally turned

Parmaster:
Red. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it was.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you’re apprehended and they take you to the tombs? Is that what it’s called?

Parmaster:
Well, first they take me up into WTC, I believe it was Seven

Nathan Sportsman:
World Trade Center, seven

Parmaster:
For the Secret Service Office, which was interesting. Kind of hung out. Guys would come around and be like, yo, they would be on the boards and they read all the reports about me doing their work. It’s their job to know me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they probably feel like they actually do know you. They almost have a

Parmaster:
Relationship. I got a lot of handshakes. I’m like, can I get a smoke? I get a cigarette from ’em. Like how often you get that you’re a criminal in a federal office.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so overall, the Secret Surf agents, they were

Parmaster:
Very nice to me. They were just interested to see me.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they go down, they bring you down to WT seven, I guess they’re kind of doing an intake. They’re interviewing you.

Parmaster:
WTC seven is Secret Service Office. I’m taken from there to the New York Police Department, which is, well, I don’t know the location, but it was special frauds unit. That’s what they had debit cards under then Special frauds unit. And then, yeah, so I was just driven from Secret Service to there and then new booking there.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you’re processed there?

Parmaster:
I’m processed, and then I’m being held in county, which is the Tombs.

Nathan Sportsman:
And what is the tombs? Is that in Manhattan itself?

Parmaster:
Yeah, it used to be. Now it has gone, it been destroyed, but back then it was,

Nathan Sportsman:
Because I’ve seen pictures of the building, it looked like not a great, it looked intimidating from the outside.

Parmaster:
Yeah, very. I mean, there’s a ton of movies that you’ll see the tombs in where people have been through the system and come out to the tombs.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so was that your first time through all of this that you were ever held up and behind bars?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I’ve never been in the system before. And that was it.

Nathan Sportsman:
What was that experience like?

Parmaster:
I was like, man, I don’t know. I’m afraid it’s New York. I don’t want to get killed in jail. So I got help. They gave me

Nathan Sportsman:
Solitary.

Parmaster:
Yeah, no, not solitary protective custody. But people look at you bad if you’re in protective custody because they go, why are you in protective custody?

Nathan Sportsman:
They think you might be.

Parmaster:
It can be even worse

Nathan Sportsman:
Writing people out or something like that.

Parmaster:
It could be even worse. But for me, without it, I wouldn’t stay alive. I don’t think.

Nathan Sportsman:
There was something going on while you were in the tombs where you just weren’t doing well, you were kind of going.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I was kind of flipped out. I was in solitary, just had me shutting myself 24 7 for a week and a half. And I was like, I threw a fit. And they were like, okay, we’ll try to get you moved to Breakers where you have more open area there.

Nathan Sportsman:
So for a week and a half, I mean, we’re not talking about even 23 1 where you have an hour outside of

Parmaster:
Right. You don’t get out at all. That door never opens. You

Nathan Sportsman:
Literally are in yourself. Yeah, anyone would go crazy. And so you start telling ’em, I don’t want to do this. I want to go somewhere else.

Parmaster:
I mean, I used to play chess with a guy through the door. He’d put the chessboard out, and so I’d tell him what moves I’m making.

Nathan Sportsman:
Was this another inmate or an officer?

Parmaster:
It was another inmate. He was a big tax fraud guy who was in custody at the time.

Nathan Sportsman:
How long were you in the tombs before you got transferred?

Parmaster:
Just

Nathan Sportsman:
That week and a half. Okay. Pretty much. And where is Richard Rosen in all of this at this

Parmaster:
Time? He’s in California in his office.

Nathan Sportsman:
And does he know that you’ve been picked?

Parmaster:
We’re on the phone back and forth the whole time.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so he does decide to retake the case.

Parmaster:
He agrees to retake the case, which was very nice of him because I had just left. I was thought about myself. I didn’t think to tell him I’m leaving. I figured that would either make things worse for him with them or worse for me with them. If I started telling people I’m not coming back, I’d never told anyone. I’m not coming back.

Nathan Sportsman:
And to your point, most lawyers, they want to be able to make sure that their client is cooperating, things like that. And so when you took off, you didn’t tell him, but here he is after you finally got arrested and he decides to help you.

Parmaster:
And he is kind enough that he remembers and he’s good enough with my case and his kindness will bring it. He said, but I’ll do 5,000, but if it gets switched to federal court, that will be more like 50,000. I’m like, okay, I understand.

Nathan Sportsman:
That’s the difference. So you’re talking to him while you’re in the tombs, you get transferred to Rikers, which is, I mean, that’s a pretty notorious prison too. Did you know that that’s where you were going?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I knew because they put me in North Infirmary command, which is, it’s a big open area with a bunch of little cells inside the area. But you have a common area where you can circulate with, you can see other people and be normal. You’re not likely not going to get killed there because North Infirmary command was protective of custody, the whole thing. There was a Colombian drug dealer in there that was in one of the cells and the part I was in. There were other people, other high profile people,

Nathan Sportsman:
And the tombs, like county, I mean, typically that’s where people are being processed and they’re AWAI trial. They’re waiting for a determination.

Parmaster:
All of these places, these are all county,

Nathan Sportsman:
But Rikers, that’s the big leap.

Parmaster:
You can be there waiting to be processed. You could be there going on the upstate, on the downstate, you’re going up to the big house or you’re going down to the big house on the bus ride down to prison in Allentown or bus ride upstate.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so going to Rikers Island, I mean, that’s where killers are. That’s where, yes.

Parmaster:
And

Nathan Sportsman:
What was going through your mind knowing that you’re getting transferred?

Parmaster:
That’s for DMX is

Nathan Sportsman:
Literally

Parmaster:
DMX was in there when I was in there. Pretty much half the entire tier was full of murderers.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you’re around all these folks, but three in particular, there’s a serial killer, there’s a murderer, and then there’s a jewelry thief.

Parmaster:
And jewelry thief is also a fireman

Nathan Sportsman:
And he’s also a fireman.

Parmaster:
So to me, he was like, okay, he’s a fucking thief, but it’s okay. I mean, he’s a fireman. He’s law enforcement anyway.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how do you go from meeting these people to sitting down with them and playing a game of D and d together?

Parmaster:
Because I knew how to do that. It was something different than everyone else, than what was going on. So I’m like, oh yeah, hell, I’ll fight d and d. What the hell? Why not?

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you literally taught a serial killer murderer and a thief how to play DV?

Parmaster:
Well, the one guy did the dungeon Master dude. He

Nathan Sportsman:
Was a dungeon master.

Parmaster:
Yeah. He’s the one who taught, I mean, I did my part too, to help them understand how you play the game. Were they any good? But this is what a round is,

Nathan Sportsman:
Right?

Parmaster:
We take our turns, which is try to get prisoners in Rikers Island to take turns. They’re going to immediately want to be just, I’m killing motherfuckers every second. I kill a motherfucker.

Nathan Sportsman:
Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine trying to teach prisoners at Rikers Island, taking turns and patience. Did they enjoy the game? Were they any good at it?

Parmaster:
Well, some enjoyed it. Kentucky enjoyed it too fucking much.

Nathan Sportsman:
So Kentucky enjoyed it too much. What do you mean by that?

Parmaster:
I take my Halbert and I splash and there’s blood everywhere. Yeah, that’s Kentucky. He loved it too much.

Nathan Sportsman:
He was good at killing hop goblins,

Parmaster:
Right? He liked killing too much.

Nathan Sportsman:
And there was a point though, too, he was demonstrating to you how he killed people and he can you kind of

Parmaster:
Yeah, he put his arm around my neck. He had his bicep. He was going to press against my Adam’s eye. Adam Dapple might crush it, but luckily the fireman came over and helped. So fireman was good at Taco with him.

Nathan Sportsman:
So you were at the tombs for a week and a half. How long were you at Bryers? A month. A month. And then you ultimately get transferred?

Parmaster:
Yeah, Chuck, the sheriff’s deputy flies me back to California.

Nathan Sportsman:
Were you ready to go at that point after meeting all these?

Parmaster:
Fuck yeah. I wanted out of there. What are you kidding? I mean, captain obvious. Yeah, I getting the fuck out of that.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so they have to fly you back to California, obviously, that’s where you’re going to have your trial and things like that.

Parmaster:
Oh yeah. Yes. I’m in county, in my hometown in California. Then

Nathan Sportsman:
In Monterey, Monterey County. Monterey County,

Parmaster:
Which is Salinas, the seat of the county.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so once you’re there, is that the first time you see Richard Rosen? Did he ever visit you in New York?

Parmaster:
Yeah. Well, he did not come. He could not come out physically there.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay.

Parmaster:
Yeah. The first time I see him is he’s pulling me into meetings once I’m physically in his area. No problem for him, because he’s a lawyer there. So he always does that with his clients. He is registered for it. He just pulls me into meetings. Hey Richard, how are you doing?

Nathan Sportsman:
But he was having to come down to county. From the time that you flew into Monterey, there was no bail or anything like that? You were

Parmaster:
In jail? I was in jail. Okay. Because I mean, I was a fugitive. I was a flight risk, obviously. I had been a fugitive. Me getting cut loose, not going to happen. I was too shackled all the time, getting moved, run. I was always shackled. If I’m in the back of a van, I fully shackled legs and arms.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you’re finally in California, two and a half years, almost two a half years on the run, and now the system finally haves you. What were your thoughts on your prospects of

Parmaster:
Oh, I was like, I don’t know what they’re going to do. They’re going to try wire fraud, I think now. And so things could change. I don’t know.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so all these things are coming out, and from what I understand, Richard Rosen tells you what we’re going to do is you’re actually going to plead guilty,

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah. You’re going to plead guilty because if we put in a plea, now they have you in the system with your birth date of whatever, January 15th. I’m like, well, that’s not right. My birthday is January five.

Nathan Sportsman:
And can we talk about that a little bit?

Parmaster:
Sure. I mean, this is how I won the case.

Nathan Sportsman:
Right? Right. And so, yeah, can you set that up for us?

Parmaster:
Yeah. I’m at the hearing. Judge is listening, all everything’s being presented. And Richard argues, hi. Yeah. I want to submit that he is older than 21. He’s over 21 years of age, which an adult in the eyes of the court of the state of California. And he had talked to a buddy of his who worked for Melvin Bei down in la, and Melvin Bei told him to say this.

Nathan Sportsman:
And from what I understand in my research of looking at California statutes is the California juvenile system. It has jurisdiction. So long as the crimes committed under the age of 18, and whether you’re clean or about to get tried, you’re under the age of 21.

Parmaster:
They’d held me in there and outrun the system so long that I had turned 21 in jail there.

Nathan Sportsman:
Right. But they didn’t know it because,

Parmaster:
But they didn’t know because they had a, there’s a document problem, clerical problem with my record with your date of birth. And so what they did is my lawyer told them, Richard said, Hey, told the judge. And the judge said, okay, what we’re going to do is we’re going to make a query to the Department of Motor Vehicles here and we’re going to find out. So it came back, they had my birthday wrong. Boom, gavel hit, case dismissed on a technicality, gavel hit. I was free to go.

Nathan Sportsman:
Because if you’re tried in the juvenile system and you plea,

Parmaster:
It stays there.

Nathan Sportsman:
It stays there.

Parmaster:
That’s how he got it to stay there.

Nathan Sportsman:
It cannot move up to the,

Parmaster:
You admit everything. Admit your par. I got to admit, I got to admit I did everything You imagine that I have to admit, I’m par and the court and records, I’m par.

Nathan Sportsman:
Right. They had planned to sentence you January 15th. They thought your birthday was January 13th. Is that right?

Parmaster:
It was the other way around.

Nathan Sportsman:
Yeah. So they were going to be able to sentence you just before you turned.

Parmaster:
Exactly. Yeah. Because they’re devious. And that’s the kind of shitty thing they do is right before you’re going to be your birthday, they’re going to fuck you over.

Nathan Sportsman:
But they didn’t know you had already turned 21. Yeah,

Parmaster:
They didn’t know, which was awesome. And

Nathan Sportsman:
So he got to go before the judge and the whole thing

Parmaster:
Gavel hit

Nathan Sportsman:
Two and a half years, nothing.

Parmaster:
Yep.

Nathan Sportsman:
What went through your mind at that point? Two and a half years on the run, you’re looking at all this

Parmaster:
Stuff? Well, because I was just amazed. I couldn’t believe Roseland came through for me. He was right. I was terrified to plead guilty because I thought maybe he was going to dump truck me or something.

Nathan Sportsman:
So

Parmaster:
I didn’t know pushing

Nathan Sportsman:
You to plead guilty. And ultimately he got you off. I mean, that’s a very special lawyer to be able to do something like that.

Parmaster:
Well, I mean, it’s good that Melvin Bella is former worker, was in contact with him because these guys have good discussions and it came up what he could do. Because when you can force to be stuck in juvenile court by doing that,

Nathan Sportsman:
And so you walk on a technicality, you’re free of all charges.

Parmaster:
No possibility of because of double,

Nathan Sportsman:
Double jeopardy. Double

Parmaster:
Jeopardy, no possibility that federal or state will try to bring it back up.

Nathan Sportsman:
And it’s all over now. The two and a half years is over. Running is over. You don’t have to be nervous of anything, anything coming back to haunt you. What’s

Parmaster:
I’m just home, man.

Nathan Sportsman:
You’re just home.

Parmaster:
Yeah. I went home. I’m like, knock on my mom’s door. Hi mom. It’s like, what do you do? Right. I am back home because it ended with me leaving there. So I went back and that was the only place I had, but I had other friends there. So eventually I was able to settle back in and with my initiative, my local friends from growing up.

Nathan Sportsman:
You mentioned coming back to family and coming back to the Secret Service. You mentioned that the Secret Service was pretty gracious through the process. They were pretty friendly with you.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I mean, they were nice. I mean, normally they’re not because and Bay Bay area, they’re very mean people. East Coast, they were so much nicer. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just the individuals and

Nathan Sportsman:
They had talked to you.

Parmaster:
They had different tactics they use, I think.

Nathan Sportsman:
Yeah. Nice guy.

Parmaster:
Yeah, good guy, bad guy.

Nathan Sportsman:
And through the process of looking for you, they found your father,

Parmaster:
Right? They found my father in Florida. I’d never met my father in my entire life, but this was the Bay Area agent who had, and he had been down to see my father and interview him. And he told me, son, Jason, sometimes when you’re soul searching, you should go down, see your father. I’m like, okay. I’m like, okay.

Nathan Sportsman:
Did you ever

Parmaster:
Tell? No, I did not. I don’t like that you went and bothered people that I don’t know.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so your father was a security guard? I think

Parmaster:
He was a prison guard in Florida.

Nathan Sportsman:
In Florida. And then he had a

Parmaster:
Tallahassee, I believe

Nathan Sportsman:
He had a family.

Parmaster:
He had a family, had a daughter and wife there. And then he passed away in 2015 in Jacksonville. I found out recently.

Nathan Sportsman:
Did you ever regret not seeing him?

Parmaster:
Yeah, I didn’t get a chance to go meet him, but I had a little bit of time I could have. Yeah.

Nathan Sportsman:
And this agent, was this the same agent you mentioned earlier that you saw him recently? Was this the same agent?

Parmaster:
No, that’s East Coast. Tom, the one I’m talking about, west Coast, Tom, there’s a West Coast agent named Tom and an East Coast agent named Tom. That’s the difference.

Nathan Sportsman:
Okay. But one of ’em, the East Coast agent kept up with you

Parmaster:
Over

Nathan Sportsman:
The years.

Parmaster:
We’re still friends. Why do you, because why not? I mean, I went into cybersecurity after I cleared my name and I ended up working with a guy who became the director of the Secret Service at my job. He was a high up, he was a former Secret Service, retired secret service that was working security in private industry as the same company I was. And he got pulled back into the Secret Service because they needed him to be the director. So he was the 24th director of the Secret Service.

Nathan Sportsman:
Tom was

Parmaster:
No,

Nathan Sportsman:
This other guy. This other guy. And so the law enforcement officer and the fugitive, you guys ultimately keep in touch and become friends,

Parmaster:
Right? Yeah. And because Tom knows, I know that guy too,

Nathan Sportsman:
From the arrest, you turned it into a career in cybersecurity. I think in the notes you had mentioned you were involved in the DNC hack, is that right?

Parmaster:
I worked at the DNC convention, which was after the hack because the DNC and the GRU,

Nathan Sportsman:
The Russian,

Parmaster:
Russian military intelligence hacked the DNC server. And then they took what they got and leaked it through WikiLeaks to the public domain. And that was a 2016 election. I’m pretty sure the Justice Department has a federal indictments. They identified who those GRU members are, and there’s federal indictments out of PA against them

Nathan Sportsman:
That are waiting just like with the Chinese. And so you’ve obviously had a storied life and a storied career getting to see all of these things.

Parmaster:
Yeah, I, and there just became more as I worked in cyber, right, it just got even more because I mean, I know what I would’ve done before and I know what to do about these things as I come upon these challenges.

Nathan Sportsman:
And you had mentioned at the beginning you had to commit a crime just to get access, just to make the lenses

Parmaster:
To be able to connect to another computer in the world at all.

Nathan Sportsman:
And so how do you think you guys changed the world, changed things? You

Parmaster:
Don’t have to now. And we worked at most of the companies that made transition the internet and did most of the connecting in the world, like the Ciscos and the F fives and other companies that connect everything in the world. And it doesn’t cost them anything. Now you have your main provider you may pay.

Nathan Sportsman:
Yeah, you guys, you had a huge impact on the industry and change things. And now, which used to be absurd charges.

Parmaster:
It doesn’t cost you like $5 a minute for 128 K packets and it was 128 K packet to metered. Imagine all day transferring data, how much it would cost.

Nathan Sportsman:
Why are you doing this? What are you hoping to get out of it?

Parmaster:
What I’m hoping to get out, I want people, I wanted to make people more free to communicate before and now people can be more free in communicating what went on before. I think this is a good idea.

Nathan Sportsman:
Well, you have a story, man, and it deserves to be told. So I really appreciate you doing this.

Parmaster:
Well, thank you so much.

Nathan Sportsman:
It’s really nice to meet you Par.

Parmaster:
Thanks, Dude.